Book Review: Vilhelm Lundström och svenskheten by Bengt Bogärde

REVIEWS
Bengt Bogärde. VILHELM LUNDSTRÖM OCH SVENSKHETEN. Göteborg: Riksföreningen Sverigekontakt, 1992. 135 pp., illustrated, softcover.
Soon after the turn of the century (1907-1908) the apprehensions aroused in Sweden by the continued heavy loss of popula­tion—
mainly in the most productive age group—during a time of dynamic industrial development at home and mounting international conflict abroad, led at last to three organized responses. Between 1907 and 1913, the Emigration Commission, mandated by the Riksdag and headed by the eminent statistician Gustav Sundbärg, sought to find practical means whereby Sweden could outbid the attractions of America. The National Society Against Emigration, established in Stockholm in 1907 and led by Adrian Molin, concentrated upon a vigorous propaganda campaign to discourage emigration and encourage remigration to the homeland. In 1908, the National Society for the Preservation of Swedish Culture in Foreign Lands (Riksföreningen för svenskhetens bevarande i utlandet) was founded in Gothenburg. Its originator and guiding light, down to his death in 1940, was Vilhelm Lundström.
Lundström's name is hardly likely to be familiar to many Swedish descendants in America today. Yet during earlier decades in this century he loomed large on the horizon of Swedish America's cultural leadership. He was a complex and many-sided individual: progressive-conservative newspaper editor associated with the "Young Right" between 1901 and 1906, member of the Riksdag from 1912 to 1914, respected philologist, and professor of classical languages at Gothenburg University from 1906. Of greatest signifi­cance,
however, was unquestionably his role with Riksföreningen.
A notable representative of Swedish National Romanticism from his student days at Uppsala in the 1890s, Lundström made it his mission in life to uphold the Swedish language and its culture in the wider world beyond the nation's own frontiers, and this is the focus of Bogärde's book. Lundström's concern for the "Swedes over­seas"—
whom he generously estimated amounting to no less than 3 million
ou
t of the 9 million Swedes in the world—was by his own account awakened by his visits to Finland and Estonia in the early 1890s, where he became acquainted with their ancient Swedish folk elements, and later, after 1901, by seeing departing throngs of emigrants passing through Gothenburg on their way to America.
Like most of the establishment in Sweden, Lundström was depressed by this exodus. Unlike others, however, he saw that if it was Sweden's supreme tragedy, it was also its greatest opportunity. As set forth in 1902 in a speech in Uppsala, Lundström declared that a nation enjoyed prestige and influence in the world to the degree that its language and culture were understood and appreciated. This idea formed the basis of what he called the "All-Swedish Movement" subsequently embodied in Riksföreningen.
In this view the outposts of svenskhet (Swedish culture) were manned by the "Finland-" and "Estonia-Swedes" to the east and the "America-Swedes" to the west. Much of Bogärde's study deals with Lundström's concerns over these two groups of "Swedes overseas." His warmest sympathies lay with the old Swedish minorities east of the Baltic (including remote Gammalsvenskby in the Ukraine), with their traditional staunch loyalty to their ancient language and culture. Efforts on their behalf were rewarding and Riksföreningen devoted most of its limited resources to them.
America, meanwhile, had by far the largest Swedish population overseas, but it also presented Lundström and Riksföreningen with their greatest problems. The "America-Swedes" seemed for the most part only lukewarm in their attachment to their heritage from the homeland. Lundström was particularly incensed by what he regarded as their lame acquiescence to official "language persecution" in the United States during and immediately following World War I and by the transition within the Swedish-American church­es—
especially the Augustana Synod—to English beginning in the 1920s. To him and his associates in Sweden, this seemed nothing short of treason. They constantly compared the steadfast East Baltic Swedes, who through the centuries had upheld their heritage in the face of foreign oppression, with the apparently faint-hearted Swedish Americans. This in turn provoked heated protests from Swedish-American leaders, who maintained that Lundström failed to under­stand
fundamental differences between their situations. The emigrants, in sum, had left the homeland of their own free will, were dispersed across an entire continent, and confronted not only the pressures but also the attractions of Americanization. Only when he at last visited the United States for the first and only time in 1938 did Lundström come to realize that the Swedish heritage remained more deeply rooted in this country than he had feared. The question remains whether Lundström's stern exhortations and reprimands did more to promote or to discourage Swedish ethnic culture in America.
The remaining dimension of Lundström's work for svenskhet abroad was Riksföreningens sponsorship of lectureships at foreign universities for the teaching of the Swedish language and literature to persons of other nationalities, a matter of special concern to him during his later years and one of the most successful aspects of his society's activity.
In presenting this short, sympathetic, yet objective study of a fascinating cultural personality and this person's life's work, Bengt Bogärde has filled an important gap in the story of the relationship between the homeland Swedes and Swedish Americans. (The closest approach to a biography of him, Svenskt bortom gränserna—Sju kapitel om Vilhelm Lundström from 1971, was collaboratively written by six experts in different fields.) A recently retired successor to Lundström as general director of Riksföreningen (now Riksföreningen Sverige­kontakt),
Bogärde has made excellent use both of the society's numerous publications and unpublished sources in its archive in Gothenburg, especially Lundström's voluminous correspondence. Scholars of Swedish and Swedish-American history alike have all reason to be grateful.
H. ARNOLD BARTON SOUTHERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY AT CARBONDALE
Arthur Mokin. IRONCLAD: THE MONITOR AND THE MERRIMACK. Novato, California: Presidio, 1991. 274 pp.
Between 1:00 and 5:00 on the afternoon of 8 March 1862, the Confederate ironclad Merrimack inflicted heavy damages on the Union fleet in Hampton Roads—where the James River meets Chesapeake Bay in southeastern Virginia. Several large Union warships were crippled or destroyed, and the remainder of the fleet was frightened off. It was a momentous day in the history of naval warfare, clearly indicating that the era of wooden navies had come to an end. When

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REVIEWS
Bengt Bogärde. VILHELM LUNDSTRÖM OCH SVENSKHETEN. Göteborg: Riksföreningen Sverigekontakt, 1992. 135 pp., illustrated, softcover.
Soon after the turn of the century (1907-1908) the apprehensions aroused in Sweden by the continued heavy loss of popula­tion—
mainly in the most productive age group—during a time of dynamic industrial development at home and mounting international conflict abroad, led at last to three organized responses. Between 1907 and 1913, the Emigration Commission, mandated by the Riksdag and headed by the eminent statistician Gustav Sundbärg, sought to find practical means whereby Sweden could outbid the attractions of America. The National Society Against Emigration, established in Stockholm in 1907 and led by Adrian Molin, concentrated upon a vigorous propaganda campaign to discourage emigration and encourage remigration to the homeland. In 1908, the National Society for the Preservation of Swedish Culture in Foreign Lands (Riksföreningen för svenskhetens bevarande i utlandet) was founded in Gothenburg. Its originator and guiding light, down to his death in 1940, was Vilhelm Lundström.
Lundström's name is hardly likely to be familiar to many Swedish descendants in America today. Yet during earlier decades in this century he loomed large on the horizon of Swedish America's cultural leadership. He was a complex and many-sided individual: progressive-conservative newspaper editor associated with the "Young Right" between 1901 and 1906, member of the Riksdag from 1912 to 1914, respected philologist, and professor of classical languages at Gothenburg University from 1906. Of greatest signifi­cance,
however, was unquestionably his role with Riksföreningen.
A notable representative of Swedish National Romanticism from his student days at Uppsala in the 1890s, Lundström made it his mission in life to uphold the Swedish language and its culture in the wider world beyond the nation's own frontiers, and this is the focus of Bogärde's book. Lundström's concern for the "Swedes over­seas"—
whom he generously estimated amounting to no less than 3 million
ou
t of the 9 million Swedes in the world—was by his own account awakened by his visits to Finland and Estonia in the early 1890s, where he became acquainted with their ancient Swedish folk elements, and later, after 1901, by seeing departing throngs of emigrants passing through Gothenburg on their way to America.
Like most of the establishment in Sweden, Lundström was depressed by this exodus. Unlike others, however, he saw that if it was Sweden's supreme tragedy, it was also its greatest opportunity. As set forth in 1902 in a speech in Uppsala, Lundström declared that a nation enjoyed prestige and influence in the world to the degree that its language and culture were understood and appreciated. This idea formed the basis of what he called the "All-Swedish Movement" subsequently embodied in Riksföreningen.
In this view the outposts of svenskhet (Swedish culture) were manned by the "Finland-" and "Estonia-Swedes" to the east and the "America-Swedes" to the west. Much of Bogärde's study deals with Lundström's concerns over these two groups of "Swedes overseas." His warmest sympathies lay with the old Swedish minorities east of the Baltic (including remote Gammalsvenskby in the Ukraine), with their traditional staunch loyalty to their ancient language and culture. Efforts on their behalf were rewarding and Riksföreningen devoted most of its limited resources to them.
America, meanwhile, had by far the largest Swedish population overseas, but it also presented Lundström and Riksföreningen with their greatest problems. The "America-Swedes" seemed for the most part only lukewarm in their attachment to their heritage from the homeland. Lundström was particularly incensed by what he regarded as their lame acquiescence to official "language persecution" in the United States during and immediately following World War I and by the transition within the Swedish-American church­es—
especially the Augustana Synod—to English beginning in the 1920s. To him and his associates in Sweden, this seemed nothing short of treason. They constantly compared the steadfast East Baltic Swedes, who through the centuries had upheld their heritage in the face of foreign oppression, with the apparently faint-hearted Swedish Americans. This in turn provoked heated protests from Swedish-American leaders, who maintained that Lundström failed to under­stand
fundamental differences between their situations. The emigrants, in sum, had left the homeland of their own free will, were dispersed across an entire continent, and confronted not only the pressures but also the attractions of Americanization. Only when he at last visited the United States for the first and only time in 1938 did Lundström come to realize that the Swedish heritage remained more deeply rooted in this country than he had feared. The question remains whether Lundström's stern exhortations and reprimands did more to promote or to discourage Swedish ethnic culture in America.
The remaining dimension of Lundström's work for svenskhet abroad was Riksföreningens sponsorship of lectureships at foreign universities for the teaching of the Swedish language and literature to persons of other nationalities, a matter of special concern to him during his later years and one of the most successful aspects of his society's activity.
In presenting this short, sympathetic, yet objective study of a fascinating cultural personality and this person's life's work, Bengt Bogärde has filled an important gap in the story of the relationship between the homeland Swedes and Swedish Americans. (The closest approach to a biography of him, Svenskt bortom gränserna—Sju kapitel om Vilhelm Lundström from 1971, was collaboratively written by six experts in different fields.) A recently retired successor to Lundström as general director of Riksföreningen (now Riksföreningen Sverige­kontakt),
Bogärde has made excellent use both of the society's numerous publications and unpublished sources in its archive in Gothenburg, especially Lundström's voluminous correspondence. Scholars of Swedish and Swedish-American history alike have all reason to be grateful.
H. ARNOLD BARTON SOUTHERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY AT CARBONDALE
Arthur Mokin. IRONCLAD: THE MONITOR AND THE MERRIMACK. Novato, California: Presidio, 1991. 274 pp.
Between 1:00 and 5:00 on the afternoon of 8 March 1862, the Confederate ironclad Merrimack inflicted heavy damages on the Union fleet in Hampton Roads—where the James River meets Chesapeake Bay in southeastern Virginia. Several large Union warships were crippled or destroyed, and the remainder of the fleet was frightened off. It was a momentous day in the history of naval warfare, clearly indicating that the era of wooden navies had come to an end. When